Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/222

 'Yes. Let us walk there. It is so beautiful there now,' said Marthe Ludérac.

Time, embalmed time, was with them in the garden. The past walked with them, Marthe's past, her mother's long dead past. These were the very flowers, Jill thought as they went, that her mother's young eyes had looked at. Nothing in the garden had been changed since the young Marthe Jacquard had walked there. A mother-of-pearl sky was above their heads and along the paths the gnarled old apple-trees were full of thick, pale leaf-buds. A pear-tree was already in flower and on its topmost branch a thrush was singing. The sense of tears, and fear, and joy, were strangely mingled in Jill's mood. She walked along the mossy paths, her arm passed within Marthe's. She felt that Marthe was very happy. Her happiness was part of the joy and fear.

'Tell me,' said Jill, looking at her, and wondering at the beauty of her face, 'is Madame de Lamouderie often very cross with you? Horrid, I mean?'

'Horrid? Why should you think so? Has she been disagreeable to you?' Marthe smiled in asking it as though they must not take the old lady seriously.

'No; not exactly disagreeable. She can be so charming, can't she? I can't help being fond of her myself, sometimes. But she can be horrid, too. You must be very fond of her indeed to go on with her year after ear.'

'I think I am very fond of her,' said Marthe, after a moment, and more gravely.